killed by death

A 34-year-old handyman has been convicted of strangling two women, including an actress who provided the voice of Norman Bates' mother in the classic Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho.

Kenneth Dean Hunt was found guilty Thursday of two counts of first-degree murder. He could receive the death penalty at his sentencing, set for Monday.

Hunt avoided suspicion in the 1988 killing of actress Myra Davis for 10 years. Authorities originally thought his 1998 victim, Jean Orloff, 60, died of a heart attack.

It wasn't until Orloff's family was preparing to have her body cremated that it was discovered she had been strangled.

Police quickly linked the two killings, noting the victims had similar markings on their necks. Both women had been raped and their houses burglarized.

Davis, 71, had also appeared as Janet Leigh's body double in Psycho. Her professional name was Myra Jones.
1959-60 was Marli Renfro’s year, the beautiful redhead was cast as Janet Leigh’s nude body double for the movie Psycho, and also graced the cover of numerous men’s magazines, including the September 1960  issue of Playboy, she danced in the chorus at Las Vegas casinos, was one of the first Playboy bunnies, and was even featured in a couple of “nudie” or “sexploitation” films when movie censors lifted the ban on nudity.Marli Renfo, described as: "Robust, energetic, and breezy, the redhead exuded health and wholesomeness. Her carriage was erect, graceful, poised, and as limber and lithe as a cat's." After the filming of Psycho, Renfro went on to star in Francis Ford Coppola's first movie, The Peeper. Renfro was a professional model and showgirl . She was hired for $500 to act as a body-double for Janet Leigh during the "Shower Scene" in "Psycho".
Although Leigh (who was never nude or topless during the filming) always maintained that Renfro only appears in the final film during the section where Anthony Perkins drags Marion's body onto the shower curtain, some of the shots of the murder sequence are undoubtedly Renfro. In particular, Hitchcock managed to slip the following segment past the censors (Renfro's breasts are visible in the background):
One of her many admirers was then college student Robert Graysmith who kept a scrapbook of her photos and her Playboy cover tacked on his wall for inspiration. Then, just as suddenly, she disappeared. Years later it was reported that life had imitated art and she had been murdered. And the author, inspired by the film noir classic, “Laura” in which a detective falls in love with the portrait of a supposedly dead one, decided to someday write a book about the beautiful redhead.

This is one of those books that has the feel of an interesting magazine article crammed and stuffed and padded with detail in order to make a nearly 300 page book. That’s not to say it isn’t interesting, and if you want a combination history of Marli Renfro, her life and misreported death, the making of Psycho, Las Vegas casinos, the Playboy franchise, nudie movies, and Francis Ford Coppola’s foray into them as a film student, as well as the stories of a few serial killers thrown in—Ed Gein, Sonny Busch, and oh yes, lest we forget, Kenneth Dean Hunt who actually did murder Myra Davis who was Janet Leigh’s fully clothed stand-in for Psycho—you’re all set, this is the book for you. But if you’re expecting something more focused and to the point chances are, depending on your temperament, you might end up throwing this book at the wall.The 45-second shower murder in Psycho is possibly the most famous scene in cinema history.
David Thomson, author of The Moment of Psycho: How Alfred Hitchcock Taught America to Love Murder, has said it still ranks "legitimately among the most violent scenes ever shot for an American film". According to the book Story of the Scene, by Roger Clarke, it "changed cinema forever".
For the film's first three-quarters of an hour the audience has followed Janet Leigh's Marion Crane, building engagement with the film's supposed central character.
Then in an electrifyingly brutal scene, as Marion readies herself for bed with a shower in the decrepit Bates Motel, she is hacked to death by a barely-glimpsed old woman.
In the late 1980s, media reporting into the murder of Myra Davis led to a rumour that Davis and Renfro were one and the same person (Davis was a stand-in for Leigh during the filming of "Psycho"). Author Robert Graysmith, who had a lifelong fascination with Renfro, investigated and subsequently wrote a book, "The Girl in Alfred Hitchcock's Shower" about Renfro's role in "Psycho" and the confusion over Davis's death.
Marli Renfro Peterson has lived in the Mojave Desert area of California since 1970.